About the Byzantine Art collection
CAMU’s glorious collection of Byzantine and post-Byzantine art highlights the brilliance and creativity of the period. It includes paintings, miniatures, gold and silverwork, wood carvings, embroidery, as well as jewelry, coins, mosaics, wall-paintings and Patriarchal documents spanning from the 18th and 19th centuries, to the flourishing icon-painting workshops of Mount Athos.
Works in the Canellopoulos Museum depict everyday life, the Orthodox Christian faith, tradition and imperial power, as inspired and captured by artists and craftsmen offering us exquisite artefacts, still vibrant today. Every artwork in the Collection reveals diverse cultural influences that make up the breadth of Byzantine art, resulting in exceptional elegance and originality.
The Collection charts the history of Byzantine art from its early years (4th-7th century AD) to the post-Byzantine and Modern periods (1453-1821). The Museum’s Byzantine and post-Byzantine icons amount to one of its most important units in the Collection, through which one can chart the course of painting from the Palaiologan period (1261-1453), a time of artistic renaissance, almost all the way to the 20th century.
The earliest icons in the Collection were produced in the workshops of Constantinople, Northern Greece and Crete. Almost all the great hagiographers of the Cretan School from the years after the Fall of Constantinople are represented in the Museum, including Nicolaos Tzafouris, Michael Damaskenos, Emmanuel Lambardos, Frangias Kavertzas, Ieremias Palladas, Victor, and Emmanuel Tzanes.
